Discovery 2x06 - "The Sounds of Thunder" [** SPOILERS WITHIN **]

TheValeyard

Getting near that time folks!

Trailer has my attention....

Looks good

pixelburp

Well it ain't going to sooth those impatient over the Spock / Red Angel mystery by the looks of things; and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just a little keen to see that plot strand tightened a little.

Still, wouldn't be the first serialised show to put the main arc on hold for character centric episodes ...

TheValeyard

Any chance that weird species is the Sheliak? (probably what Saru calls the Ba'ul)

Inviere

pixelburp wrote: »

Still, wouldn't be the first serialised show to put the main arc on hold for character centric episodes ...

This will be episode 6, out of 14 for season 2. This doesn't seem to be an arc episode either, so perhaps episode 7 will move things along. That's 50% of the season gone, and precious little overall arc development seen. The point you make above is fine for shows with larger number of episodes per season (hell, it's sometimes nice to take a break from an arc for character development/exposition...but Discovery S2 feels more like taking a break from standalone episodes to progress an arc!)

pixelburp

Inviere wrote: »

This will be episode 6, out of 14 for season 2. This doesn't seem to be an arc episode either, so perhaps episode 7 will move things along. That's 50% of the season gone, and precious little overall arc development seen. The point you make above is fine for shows with larger number of episodes per season (hell, it's sometimes nice to take a break from an arc for character development/exposition...but Discovery S2 feels more like taking a break from standalone episodes to progress an arc!)

There's probably an element with the background of the production at play here as well; can't imagine all this upheaval helped promote a stable writing room.

To be pedantic, the first two episodes were directly related to the Red Angel mystery, so I suppose the narrative feet-dragging hasn't gone on that long, but the execution I think is where the failure can be seen; the Discovery has been literally chasing a ship, and that has a limited shelf life in terms of believability.

Mind you, I can enjoy the individual adventures on their own merits - certainly the prospect of a Saru-centric story on his home planet makes me park any growing irritation over the Search for Spock.

Inviere

pixelburp wrote: »

There's probably an element with the background of the production at play here as well; can't imagine all this upheaval helped promote a stable writing room.

Definitely. I've said in another thread that despite its sometimes obvious problems, I do enjoy Discovery. It has a LOT of potential. For me, the biggest issue with it has been the internal strife, behind the camera, rather than what's in front of the camera.

Mind you, I can enjoy the individual adventures on their own merits - certainly the prospect of a Saru-centric story on his home planet makes me park any growing irritation over the Search for Spock.

As do I. I think an arc when handled correctly, knows how to balance non-arc content with arc based content. In fact, I'd probably have enjoyed the last few episodes of Discovery far more, had I not felt there was a story in the background to be dealt with. The individual episodes are pretty good actually, while the handling of the overall arc has been pretty poor imo. There's too much of a disconnect between them.

PhiloCypher

I imagine we'll catch up with Spock in the final episode before the mid season break. The Red Angel Arc will then kick into high gear and dominate the 2nd half of the season, causing the same people who moaned about too little progression of the main arc to moan about too much arc at the expense of character.

Goodshape

PhiloCypher wrote: »

I imagine we'll catch up with Spock in the final episode before the mid season break.

Pretty sure there is no break this season.


I've really not missed the "arc" progression at all so far. Not that I don't care about it, I just haven't ever felt it needed to be there, or that any episode would have been better if it focused more on it.

We've had small mentions here and there and it's (literally) set the course for the ship and crew, but then they've found other things to do to fill the hour and that's been a-ok.

Honestly would surprise me if anyone is watching these episodes and thinking "yeah, okay, BUT WHERE IS SPOCK FFS?!?".

Spear

I thought it decent enough. Some pretty specific advancement of the overall arc, tied up one long term thread with Saru, and pulled in other ones.

liamtech

A Great Episode - SPOILERS

So for me this was decent and engaging - far better than the last two episodes which for me were VERY weak.

The Prime Directive - this was rather interesting to me as it was technically violated, but then with no explanation they seem to stop worrying about it - which im fine with TBH i was concerned that they would just sit back and say 'cant interfere' - and allow the slaughter - Iv had several chats with fans over the PD, and i honestly think it has been ridiculous in a few episodes over the years.

The Kelpians and the Predators.. Yea this was well written and ties up the whole 'Saru evolving plot' - he really did behave like a predator - and it tied in the Sphere and its memory dump - I really enjoyed this segment - Saru is still Saru, but he is different now - far more driven - and a credit to the actor

Section 31 - Yea aside from the fact it is being discussed openly, which is stupid, and a violation of canon imho, - but Ash did very much behave as Sloan would have - The angels are a potential threat and S31 will protect Federation interests in what ever way the see fit

The Red Angel - obviously we have no idea yet - there is a kinda 'qunatum leap' plot leaking in - they are running around the galaxy 'putting right what once went wrong' - who knows it might tie in to the Temporal Cold war from enterprise - we just dont have enough information at the moment

I think this is the Best episode of this season by a substantial margin - i look forward to seeing what you guys think

PetKing

That episode was absolutely fantastic. More of the same please!

Spear

Did anyone else think it's a woman in the Red Angel suit? If this turns out to be a time travelling Tilly, I'll be quite unhappy.

CastorTroy

Good episode. Glad to see Saru allowed to go home again and his people having the truth revealed. Could have done with a bit more time to show the Ba'ul agreeing to work with the Kelpians. It just went from attempted genocide to seemingly assuming all is good.
Thought it was going to be revealed that the Ba'ul are somehow the evolved Kelpians.
I was wondering how they developed such advanced technology while being in the position Kelpians were later.

I'm not saying they need to do a better job of letting people know who characters are, but you know it's bad when even Tilly seems to struggle remembering Airiam's name.

corkie

If you haven't see Saru's short before now, it may be worth watching first.

Short Treks: The Brightest Star


First Tilly had a short, and the main show featured her in big way with the spore entity.

Now an episode focusing on Saru and his planet.

Just hoping we don't get an episode focusing on Harry Mud

and his robot clones

?

Red Angel got further developed in the episode.

Time Traveling Character with a Advance tech suit

. Rules out my thought of it being a Q like entity.

TheValeyard

I liked it. Although once again, too much Michael, pacing still not right. Still feels like a rush from scene to scene. Not enough Robot lady.

But the Ba'ul are awesome looking and the history between them and the Kelpiens is interesting.

Nice small bit of forward progress on the overall arc.

I think season two so far bad been very solid. Far, far better than the first half of season one.

And who do we think the Red Angel is? Spock? Tilly? Iconian?, Preservers?, Goodshape?

Yester

I think the Red Angel is an amalgamation of all the Red shirts that have died in the line of duty.

TheValeyard

Yester wrote: »

I think the Red Angel is an amalgamation of all the Red shirts that have died in the line of duty.

Sad Professor

Good episode. Some impressive direction. Scene transitions, wow, that must be a first in Star Trek. It has a very movie-like plot and pacing mixed with stagey, talkative scenes of characters delivering big exposition and character development dumps. Reminded me of the last season of GOT.

The Trekkie in me can't help but be annoyed at how they hand waved the prime directive or how everyone seems to just ignore Pike's orders without any consequences. Also the way Michael just appears out of nowhere in the middle of scenes is weird. I laughed during the final scene when the camera panned to reveal that Michael was standing there all along.

Slydice

200 years later..

Ba'ul? Nope ain't never heard of no Ba'ul

:eek:

PhiloCypher

Ughhhh another pseudo profound personal log to open an episode.

I jest, kind of. While it's nice to have someone waxing lyrical other then Burnham it would be nice to have a run of episodes where there was no opening monologue at all, just to break things up. In fairness this was a deeply personal episode for Saru so I'll forgive the writers this time. But that's it ya hear.

Overall, I enjoyed it. The episode definitely benefited from being more focused on the A plot and accompanying character arc with Saru. While I've enjoyed some of the last few episodes various threads, there was so much going on they all tend to blend together. This episode did a great job of telling a focused story while pulling in Hughs struggles and the sphere both of which would have been forgotten about in any other Trek show.

The ba'ul appearance was creepy as ****, is that their natural appearance or was he just taking an oil bath and didn't have time to shower it off? Their base also rises up from under the lake, are they Aquatic, did the Kelpians exxon Valdez the Ba'uls natural habitat while they were on top ;p

There's certainly a lot of questions still to be explored about how the Ba'ul managed to flip the dynamic. Did they take advantage of a near extinction level event to fill in the ecological niche vacated by the Kelpians, did they cause said event, could they even considering they were likely kept in as downtrodden a state as the Kelpians. Were the Kelpians technologically advanced or on the cusp of some great technological advancement when the hammer fell and thus the Ba'ul were able to get a technogical leg up explaining how they advanced to being a warp capable civilisation so soon(relatively) after being a prey species to the Kelpians.

TheValeyard

Slydice wrote: »

200 years later..

Ba'ul? Nope ain't never heard of no Ba'ul

:eek:

The Ba'ul become........The Sheliak

Slydice

Yeah a cross between the The Sheliak and Armus came to mind

Goodshape

Really enjoyed that! Pretty great!

A little less focus on Michael Burnham, that was nice.

A bit of a do-over for the Kelpians as a species then. I'm fine with that! Much more interesting now. As are the Ba'ul.

I'm still getting really annoyed with the camera work in most scenes. If they're not going to fix it I'll just need to try and ignore it from now on. It's awful though. Really distracting. Although this episode wasn't as bad as other, outside of a few scenes.

Pike was a bit of a pushover in this episode.

Saru was great. Everything in the A-story was great actually. I'd been worried about a Kelpian storyline after that Short Treks episode (didn't like it!) but they did really well.

Stamets / Culber – brief, good, interesting.

Tilly / Airiam – Great! Loved those scenes

Goodshape

Murray TheDemonic TalkingSkull wrote: »

And who do we think the Red Angel is? Spock? Tilly? Iconian?, Preservers?, Goodshape?

Not me, I don't have the hips.

Looked like a female figure in the suit, I thought? Maybe Tilly, or Burnham. Really hope it's not either of them though. At the moment I'd just prefer it be some interesting new specious or person.

I'm prepared to be disappointed though. Knowing this show, it probably is Burnham.

fritzelly

Glued to the tv for that episode, loved it
Red angel definitely looks female in some kind of space suit

c.p.w.g.w

Great episode, really enjoyed it

alchemist33

Spear wrote: »

Did anyone else think it's a woman in the Red Angel suit? If this turns out to be a time travelling Tilly, I'll be quite unhappy.

Reminds me of C Montgomery Burns the time he got high and everyone thought he was an alien

TheValeyard

See one theory

Red Matter + Destruction of Romulus Spock + Tachyons = Red Angel


Few problems with that theory, but interesting though.

pixelburp

That was a really impressive episode. Fast paced, but not hectic or breakneck. The little non Saru interstitials were bite sized but satisfactory too. Some great direction as well, with imaginative scene transitions. Taking the focus off Burnham really benefited the breadth to tell the story.

The red angel mystery deepens, but does become a little clearer. Time travel must be a factor now, and potential some form of self fulfilling prophecy at play. It probably is either Tilly or Burnham, realising they need to go back and do these things to close the loop.

Blazer

If it is Tilly I hope she does go back in and kill herself..paradox be damned!!!!

TheValeyard

It's Captain Lorca as the Angel Gabriel.

alchemist33

Blazer wrote: »

If it is Tilly I hope she does go back in and kill herself..paradox be damned!!!!

Anything that could possibly pave the way for the return of Captain Killy is fine by me.


I really enjoyed that episode. Saru is becoming my favourite character and I was looking forward to his going home, although I thought it would happen later and in some more detail.

My main problem in this one was how fast and loose they played with the prime directive and the further deployment of magic science, this time evolving every single kelpian in a few minutes. I know Star Trek was always nearly as much fantasy as SF but either I'm getting more discerning with age or Discovery is turning it up a notch.

fritzelly

Prime Directive has been ignored/broken plenty of times

pixelburp

I think they made a reasonable arguement for stretching the directive though, given the prey species (whose name I won't try to spell / Google) were warp capable and had already contacted Starfleet.

It was nowhere near the realms of Into Darkness' pretty iffy interpretation of the Prime Directive for instance.

Johnny Storm

Red alert: I enjoyed two episodes of Discovery in a row!

368100

Blazer wrote: »

If it is Tilly I hope she does go back in and kill herself..paradox be damned!!!!

Why all the Tilly hate? She's a bit of comic relief and refreshing that not all of Starfleet are robots that are just 100% brilliant at all times

Spear

fritzelly wrote: »

Glued to the tv for that episode, loved it
Red angel definitely looks female in some kind of space suit

Proportions wise it does seem to match Burnham.

Which would be annoying. Self fulfilling prophecies like this are a tired trope in sci-fi. DS9 even actively mocked the concept 20 years back.

fritzelly

Spear wrote: »

Proportions wise it does seem to match Burnham.

Which would be annoying. Self fulfilling prophecies like this are a tired trope in sci-fi. DS9 even actively mocked the concept 20 years back.

Yep, said it earlier on
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=109501118&postcount=556

AMKC

That was a really good episode. Really enjoyed that.

The Ba'ul almost look a bit like that creature that killed Tasha Yar in some ways.

Also its been wrecking me head but I know there is another show with a race called Baul or very similar and nearly sure its Stargate. Am I right?

Loved that this episode was all about Saru and it was great to see him get to return home.

A few things bugging me do.

They said the Ba'ul only discovered warp drive 20 years ago and yet they have ships bigger than Discovery and a lot of them too. So do they have an Empire as well and rule other worlds?


Where are the Ba'ul getting all the resources for all there technology and to build all their ships?

Its obviously not Keminar as everything is in perfect harmony there.

Also could anyone make out where the torpedo's were being fired from Discovery? I thought that was badly done and why did it take Discovery so long to start firing on the Ba'ul watchtowers.

Otherwise really enjoyable episode.

fritzelly

AMKC wrote: »

Also could anyone make out where the torpedo's were being fired from Discovery? I thought that was badly done and why did it take Discovery so long to start firing on the Ba'ul watchtowers.

Discovery didn't fire any torpedoes - you're getting confused with some mystery entity/ship that fired the Red Angel on to the planet

AlmightyCushion

AMKC wrote: »

Also its been wrecking me head but I know there is another show with a race called Baul or very similar and nearly sure its Stargate. Am I right?

The main bad guys in Stargate were the Goa'uld and one of them was called Ba'al. It's all I could think about when they were saying Ba'ul.

Franz Von Peppercorn

pixelburp wrote: »

I think they made a reasonable arguement for stretching the directive though, given the prey species (whose name I won't try to spell / Google) were warp capable and had already contacted Starfleet.

It was nowhere near the realms of Into Darkness' pretty iffy interpretation of the Prime Directive for instance.

There was no violation here at all in fact.

Anyway the prime directive shouldn’t justify genocide.

Witcher

Some of the camera work is taking the p1ss at this stage :pac: WTF was that?

Check out @PenskyFile’;s Tweet: https://twitter.com/PenskyFile/status/1098953277515935745?s=09

AMKC

fritzelly wrote: »

Discovery didn't fire any torpedoes - you're getting confused with some mystery entity/ship that fired the Red Angel on to the planet

I am pretty sure they did. Pike said fire torpedo's and tactical officer said there is too many we can not hit them all in time sir or something like that. Then they fired torpedo's and then we seethe Red Angel do its thing.

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

The main bad guys in Stargate were the Goa'uld and one of them was called Ba'al. It's all I could think about when they were saying Ba'ul.

That must be it.

Witcher wrote: »

Some of the camera work is taking the p1ss at this stage :pac: WTF was that?

Agreed that was terrible camera work there.

Check out @PenskyFile’;s Tweet: https://twitter.com/PenskyFile/status/1098953277515935745?s=09

Spear

AMKC wrote: »

I am pretty sure they did. Pike said fire torpedo's and tactical officer said there is too many we can not hit them all in time sir or something like that. Then they fired torpedo's and then we seethe Red Angel do its thing.

No, they never fired. The order was just to arm the torps, then wait for the signal to fire.

The Red Angel moves in a series of skips or bursts, and that's what's shown passing them heading down to the surface.

fritzelly

Spear wrote: »

No, they never fired. The order was just to arm the torps, then wait for the signal to fire.

The Red Angel moves in a series of skips or bursts, and that's what's shown passing them heading down to the surface.

What he said

AtomicHorror

Slydice wrote: »

200 years later..

Ba'ul? Nope ain't never heard of no Ba'ul

:eek:

Most TV programs set in the 20th and 21st century are oddly silent about the Austro-Hungarian Empire too. If anything, Star Trek writers tendency to throw in easter egg references to internal history feels less natural than silence.

GreeBo

Liked it, but i hate it when a sci fi show had a species that could never have happened.
The lads live in a tar pit, have Marilyn Manson as a hairdresser and have fingers 2 feet long... there is just no way they are building space ships or anything for that matter... couldn't even pickup a screwdriver ffs.

flazio

Have to admit I was worried we were about to have another nausea inducing, camera can't keep still episode, like the one from a few weeks back, when we had the Pike, Tyler, Burnham briefing scene but thankfully the story won out in the end.
What was the director trying to do? Install a sense of urgency?

AtomicHorror

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Most TV programs set in the 20th and 21st century are oddly silent about the Austro-Hungarian Empire too. If anything, Star Trek writers tendency to throw in easter egg references to internal history feels less natural than silence.

The picts get a lot of air time nowadays.

AMKC

AMKC wrote: »

They said the Ba'ul only discovered warp drive 20 years ago and yet they have ships bigger than Discovery and a lot of them too. So do they have an Empire as well and rule other worlds?


Where are the Ba'ul getting all the resources for all there technology and to build all their ships?

Did Pike look at all worried about the ships? Size doesn't equate to power or tech advancement.

There are more resources in our asteroid belt than we've ever used, plenty of resources in system to do that.